Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck.
Speaker 1: Jerry's here again sitting in for Dave and this is
Speaker 1: short stuff. Come in.
Speaker 2: Oh no, I was just wishing myself good luck.
Speaker 1: Oh well that should sound like this.
Speaker 2: We're talking about knocking on wood, and it's actually not
Speaker 2: for good luck. Knocking on wood is more to avoid
Speaker 2: tempting fate.
Speaker 1: It depends on who you're talking to. Are you an
Speaker 1: ancient celt or a modern day Chuck.
Speaker 2: I'm a modern day Kilt.
Speaker 1: Oh god, no, no, no, I'm an ancient Chuck.
Speaker 2: That's what I am.
Speaker 1: My brain's busted. Now you're gonna have to take over
Speaker 1: the rest of this episode, now, all right, So yeah,
Speaker 1: you're right. These days we knock on wood to ward
Speaker 1: off bad luck. Usually it's when we're saying something like
Speaker 1: a boast, or we're saying something that we don't want
Speaker 1: the opposite to happen.
Speaker 2: Thanks, you're going so great for this podcast. Nothing will
Speaker 2: ever stop it from being successful.
Speaker 1: Knock on wood. That's another thing you have to do too.
Speaker 1: You you're doing it too many times, by the way,
Speaker 1: you might actually be undoing the charm. I also say
Speaker 1: knock on wood when I knock on wood, I guess
Speaker 1: just to double up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Emily always says she's very a big wood knocker,
Speaker 2: so she's always like, you better find some wood to knock.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you can't. You can't mess around with like plastic
Speaker 1: or metal.
Speaker 2: It has to be fake wood even.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So the the there's been all like this is
Speaker 1: just a whole episode on Weird Little Luck Rituals. We
Speaker 1: talked about throwing salt over your shoulder before, and I
Speaker 1: think we've talked about knocking on wood at some point before,
Speaker 1: because it seems familiar that it can be traced back
Speaker 1: to the ancient Celts and essentially based on their belief
Speaker 1: that trees, particularly oak trees, harbored spirits and that if
Speaker 1: you came in contact with the tree, you were coming
Speaker 1: in contact essentially with the spirits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and trees were a big deal. And you know,
Speaker 2: if you've built your house out of a tree, you
Speaker 2: may knock on that wood is sort of saying like, hey,
Speaker 2: I believe if you'd knocked once it was like hey,
Speaker 2: thanks for the good luck, and a second knock was
Speaker 2: saying like thank you, I guess for your wood. All
Speaker 2: of these things are action based, though, and there's something
Speaker 2: around that, like most of these good luck things, like
Speaker 2: you can't and it's not like good luck is even
Speaker 2: a real thing anyway, but in order to feel like
Speaker 2: you're achieving that desired outcome of luck, you can't just
Speaker 2: think it with kind of any of these things that
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about. And they've even done
Speaker 2: research that was a study not a great one, but
Speaker 2: a study from the University of Chicago in twenty thirteen
Speaker 2: where they would have someone say something that like tempted
Speaker 2: fate like our podcast will never you know, go down
Speaker 2: the tubes or whatever, and then you could either knock wood,
Speaker 2: throw a ball of course, which is not part of
Speaker 2: any ritual that we that I know of, or just
Speaker 2: hold on to a ball. And they found that the
Speaker 2: people who felt like, all right, I think this worked
Speaker 2: is the ones who actually did something, whether even if
Speaker 2: it was throwing the ball, because it was an action.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they went to some effort to secure their good
Speaker 1: luck or stave off the bad luck.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So apparently that again people trace this back to
Speaker 1: the ancient Celts and their love of oak trees and
Speaker 1: their belief that the spirits are in the oak trees,
Speaker 1: so I think Also one of the things I saw
Speaker 1: is that when you knock, you're essentially waking them up, like,
Speaker 1: wake up, spirits, I need your help to secure this
Speaker 1: good luck. Pretty interesting. And then other people are like, no,
Speaker 1: you're knocking to basically to make a sound over your talking,
Speaker 1: so the bad spirits can't hear you. That makes a
Speaker 1: lot of sense too, But also, isn't it a little
Speaker 1: too neat? Isn't it a little too tidy? Doesn't it
Speaker 1: seem like there would be a much more recent, much
Speaker 1: less Celtic pagany explanation than that.
Speaker 2: Well there may be in the Brits, say touchwood instead
Speaker 2: of knockwood, and apparently that was a game when was
Speaker 2: this like the night in the nineteenth century, so much
Speaker 2: more recent called tig touch wood. I've also seen tiggy
Speaker 2: touch wood where it's basically tag where different trees are
Speaker 2: assigned as bases, and if you were touching wood then
Speaker 2: you were safe from being tagged it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. A folklorist named Steve Rowd traced it back to
Speaker 1: an eighteen ninety one book called The Boy's Modern Playmate.
Speaker 1: That's fun sure, So yeah, he thinks that this is
Speaker 1: actually where this idea of touching wood and being safe
Speaker 1: and then eventually evolving into knocking wood for good luck
Speaker 1: came from that. It's as recent as one hundred or
Speaker 1: so years ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think if you're in their variations, if you're
Speaker 2: in Turkey, you do the knock wood twice, but you
Speaker 2: also pull on your ear lobe one time.
Speaker 1: I like that one. I'm going to start doing that.
Speaker 2: And I thing in Italy they say touch iron, and
Speaker 2: people say why, I have no comeback for that, trying
Speaker 2: to think of something Italian.
Speaker 1: There's nothing to say other than because there's no good answer.
Speaker 1: They're supposed to be touching what they just have it wrong. Essentially,
Speaker 1: Sorry Italy, I say we take a break and come
Speaker 1: back and talk about some other lucky practices around the world.
Speaker 1: How about that?
Speaker 2: Sure? No, sevision, No.
Speaker 1: Okay, Chuck. Let's say that we're in Greece and I've
Speaker 1: seen you across the street and I'm like, that guy
Speaker 1: looks really good in those pants, so I'm jealous of them.
Speaker 1: You might look over and see me go and like
Speaker 1: kind of wave my hand at you, And what I've
Speaker 1: just done is basically given you the evil eye of envy,
Speaker 1: and so to erase that I've spat three times and
Speaker 1: waved off my envy.
Speaker 2: Okay, what culture is at grease?
Speaker 1: Grease? But spitting it's also big in Jewish culture too, too,
Speaker 1: is I think three times usually is the way you
Speaker 1: do it for good luck or to ward off bad
Speaker 1: luck more more usually.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've also seen spitting over your shoulder, which that's hard.
Speaker 2: That is hard. I mean you can sort of spit, just.
Speaker 1: Spit right on your shoulders. I do.
Speaker 2: I got one Denmark. This is very interesting. They save
Speaker 2: their broken dishes. I like sort of elaborate ones like these.
Speaker 2: So if you break a dish in Denmark, you just
Speaker 2: save it all year long and you collect it, I guess,
Speaker 2: and your little broken dish bin, and you save it
Speaker 2: till New Year's Eve. And they will they will chuck
Speaker 2: their broken plates toward people that they want to have
Speaker 2: good luck, toward their houses, like a friend or a
Speaker 2: family or whatever, to wish them good luck. And I
Speaker 2: think the children can even just leave a little pile
Speaker 2: on their friend's doorstep if they want them to, like,
Speaker 2: instead of throwing it, they can just say, like, I
Speaker 2: don't even know how to do a Danish accent, but
Speaker 2: here's a little pile of broken dishes.
Speaker 1: Do it like bew York even though she's Icelandic. I
Speaker 1: think it'll.
Speaker 2: Cover Oh man, I wish I could do be York.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I like that. I also like leaving it
Speaker 1: as a pile, whether than throwing your broken dishes at
Speaker 1: someone's house because somebody's got to clean that up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of my favorites is crossing fingers. Like, not only
Speaker 1: do I like to cross fingers myself, I like using
Speaker 1: the emoji crossing fingers is huge with me.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You would think that it probably dates back quite a ways,
Speaker 1: and there's a story that it actually was originated by
Speaker 1: the early Christians who were persecuted by the Romans at
Speaker 1: the time, so they would cross fingers to basically signify
Speaker 1: it at one another, to make a symbol of the cross,
Speaker 1: almost like hey, I'm with you, buddy, I'm a Christian.
Speaker 1: And I read I think in an Oxford explanatory article
Speaker 1: on that that basically this is how they put it.
Speaker 1: So they found that they can only date it back
Speaker 1: to nineteen twelve and said given its late appearance, restricted
Speaker 1: distribution most of the UK and colonies, and the fact
Speaker 1: that crossed fingers bear no relation to the shape of
Speaker 1: a cross. This explanation is completely unfounded.
Speaker 2: My buddy Brett and I have always done we go
Speaker 2: double hope hope, and we each cross both of our fingers.
Speaker 2: I go and kiss each one, not each other's. Wow,
Speaker 2: though we probably should.
Speaker 1: That's got to work really well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not. I mean, I think we got that
Speaker 2: from Why do I want to say we got that
Speaker 2: from a movie like True Romance or something. I have
Speaker 2: no idea.
Speaker 1: I don't. It doesn't really always.
Speaker 2: Done it, so I have no idea where it came from.
Speaker 2: I know. In China, what they do is they believe
Speaker 2: that your good luck comes through the front of the house. Yes,
Speaker 2: and so before Chinese New Year, which is not the
Speaker 2: same as our New Year, they clean their houses. But
Speaker 2: they don't sweep out the dirt or the quote unquote
Speaker 2: bad They sweep it all in in a little pile
Speaker 2: and they collect it because they have to put it
Speaker 2: out the back door. You never want to if you
Speaker 2: want to bring in good luck, you don't want to
Speaker 2: sweep that stuff out of the front door.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you don't do any cleaning at all.
Speaker 1: The first couple of days after Chinese New Year because
Speaker 1: you're letting that good luck accumulate, you know. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: actually adopted that one for our New Year Western New Year.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, nice out.
Speaker 1: The bront door. I just don't clean for a couple
Speaker 1: of days. I cleaned first, and I don't think I
Speaker 1: was ticking out the back door, but the side door,
Speaker 1: I guess counts. It's not the front door, all right.
Speaker 1: But then after, like so New Year's Eve you can
Speaker 1: do that, but on New Year's Day there's no cleaning
Speaker 1: or anything like that.
Speaker 2: Well, what about Thailand? This is interesting?
Speaker 1: Yeah, why don't you take it? All right?
Speaker 2: Little boys and men in Thailand think that if you
Speaker 2: wear I'm not sure what's to pronounced palade kiek is
Speaker 2: how I would say it, p l A p A
Speaker 2: l A d k h i k, which is a
Speaker 2: penis amulet. If you wear that in your pants, then
Speaker 2: that's going to bring you luck. And this is just
Speaker 2: a you know, it's a little If you look them up,
Speaker 2: they look like very ornate of different design, but they're
Speaker 2: all different versions of little car penises. They're usually pretty
Speaker 2: small couple of inches, and they think that that will
Speaker 2: bring you good luck and lessen like the severity of
Speaker 2: an injury maybe, and I think just overall good luck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty great?
Speaker 2: Huh sure, why not?
Speaker 1: I don't have anything else? Do you have anything else?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, Chuck, I wish you the best of luck in
Speaker 1: all of your endeavors.
Speaker 2: Right back at you, I hold my penis amulet up
Speaker 2: in your honor.
Speaker 1: Thank you same to you. That means, of course, short
Speaker 1: stuff is that.
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